


Civilization

by beer_good



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: 16th Century CE, Alternate History, Backstory, Colonialism, Gen, Period-Typical Racism, Pre-Canon, Prostitution, Vampire Slayer(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26822956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beer_good/pseuds/beer_good
Summary: In our reality, the Roanoke colony in Virginia disappeared mysteriously at some point between 1588 and 1590, and the first successful English colony in Virginia was only established in 1607. In the Buffyverse, that colony appears strangely well-established in 1609. There's an obvious explanation for this, that includes the girl who would become Darla.
Kudos: 5
Collections: Buffyverse Bingo





	Civilization

Here's my second entry for this year's [Buffyverse Bingo](https://beer-good-foamy.dreamwidth.org/456625.html). Let's say this one is for "Autumn holiday/festival".

 **Title:** Civilization  
**Author:** Beer Good   
**Fandom:** _Angel_ , pre-series  
**Characters/Pairing:** Darla, The Master  
**Rating:** PG13  
**Word count:** ~750  
**Summary:** In our reality, the Roanoke colony in Virginia disappeared mysteriously at some point between 1588 and 1590, and the first successful English colony in Virginia was only established in 1607. In the Buffyverse, that colony appears strangely well-established in 1609. There's an obvious explanation for this.

**Civilization**

_Roanoke Colony, 1597_

After they landed at Roanoke, a woman and her young daughter carrying all they owned, it didn't take the girl long to make friends. There weren't that many children here - the oldest born here, Virginia, was a year younger than her at ten. Her mother was happy for her that she'd found friends, plus of course it was good to know someone else was keeping track of her while she was working.

(Of course the girl knew how her mother had earned her living back home and on their passage across. There was a surplus of men in the brand-new colonies, and they felt lonely; what other use could they have for a single woman? At least this way, the mother told herself, she might give the girl a chance to be more than that.)

Roanoke colony was so very small compared to Southampton. At first the girl had scoffed at playing with these children, most of whom had never seen city streets. She missed her friends back home, and having to do so much extra work in the fields and kitchens didn't feel much like the new start her mother had promised her. But truth was, she got along fine with the children, and running around the forests and fields was something new, something it felt like she'd been missing. And then there were the stories.

She'd thought the stories they told of life in this new world were meant to scare her, but as gruesome as they were, they felt strangely comforting. They never told them when adults were around, only in whispered tones among each other. It was always Virginia who got to tell the _big_ story, with details added by the others gradually making their way into the main story if they proved popular.

"My grandfather says it was divine intervention, that we should all be gone. That only our prayers and the prayers of all of England saved us. But he wasn't here, see."

"Neither were you, Virginia," one of the younger boys said.

"Was too. I was just too small to remember." But the story was shared among the children who'd heard it from parents who thought they were asleep; how in the autumn of 1589, just before the snow came, the demons had come upon the brand-new colony; creatures who walked at night, drank the blood of the living and made their victims like them, and how the colony had lost several good men who tried in vain to fight them… until a young girl, barely older than they are now, a savage from a nearby tribe, had come into the village wielding a sharp spear and a stone ax and killed them all, saving the colony.

"My grandfather says that if our colony had not stood, the progress of Christianity could have been set back for decades. That it was our miraculous survival, knowing that our land was promised to us by God almighty", Virginia Dare spoke those big words so carefully, "that inspired Virginia Colony to be settled last year and grow so large."

"What happened to the girl?", the new girl asked the third time she heard the story. "The savage?"

The other children looked at each other and shrugged. "She was a savage. They come and go, who knows what happens to them."

They stayed at Roanoke for one wonderful year before Decency And Propriety had them move to the new colony at Elizabethtown. She was 15 when her mother became sick and she had to take over the family business full-time while her mother wasted away. Business in the booming colony was good. She was 24 in October of 1609, when she met the Master at her deathbed.

The night before the two vampires headed south towards the warm and crowded Spanish colonies, after they'd spent the week leading up to All Hallow's Eve harrowing the colony by night while the Master told her the stories of their people and their enemies by day ("Darla" he called her, a name she liked much better than the one who'd been promised a better world), she took a last look at the colony. The wide streets, one of them even cobbled now, the houses growing taller, smoke rising towards the sky from hundreds of chimneys where there had been forest within her lifetime, where a Slayer had saved this land for them to feed on.

"We are beyond them now," he told her. "They are cattle, and little more. So we let them grow and we will be back to harvest them later."

Finally, she thought, a promise that would be kept.


End file.
